A while ago, when I was beginning my struggle with Finnish, I found it quite difficult to find translations online, since Finnish is a highly inflected language and word roots are not easy to identify for a beginner.

After having googled enough Finnish words, I was starting to see a possibility – almost every search yielded an excerpt from a specific source.

I had never read more than a few pages of it before, but I soon saw that the Bible is the perfect language resource:

It’s available in almost all languages

Text is highly consistent across most languages

It’s very well structured

The smallest unit of text in many parts is 1-3 sentences long

The last point is very important as it makes the book ideal for being used as a text corpus.

Let’s take the word kansalle, for example.

If you google for the search term “kansalle finnish bible”, the first result gives you Kings, Chapter 12.